A journal of byzantine digressionS
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We Have Gained More Than Ever We Lost
A Homily for the Ascension from the works of Pope St Leo. After the blessed and glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (wherein was raised up in three days that true Temple of God which had been destroyed by the impiety of Jewry), there came by God’s providential ordering a season of forty days,…
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Moralistic Therapeutic Blindness
In their 2005 work, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton introduced the term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” to describe the spirituality they found among those teenagers. Most of the commentary I’ve read about the topic (hereinafter MTD) has included a lot of hand-wringing and asking…
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St Augustine’s Sermon for St Thomas Sunday.
The Feast of this day is the end of the paschal solemnity, and therefore it is today that the Newly-Baptized put off their white garments. But though they lay aside the outward mark of washing, namely, their white raiment, the inward mark of that washing remaineth in their souls unto eternity. Now are the days…
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Wedding Cakes and Religious Freedom
Do you refuse cakes to Jews, Hindus, and Muslims? Non-religious weddings? Do you only bake cakes for members of your tiny little sect, be it only 5 or almost 500 years old (such old)? Do you ask if your couples will engage in sex during Lent or other fasting times? Do you ask them if…
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St Augustine on the Miracles of Jesus
The miracles wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ were verily divine works, and they stir up the mind of man to rise by a perception of what is seen by the eye unto an apprehension of God himself. For God is of such substance as eye cannot see, and the many miracles which he doth…
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Medium: New Longer Essay Site
I have been experimenting with useing the new site, Medium, for longer-form essays. I’ve just published one (about 4,000 words long) called Orthodoxy and the Celibate Sodomite. I’m still a bit too long-form, because the longer essays I see over there are about half the length of mine. But sometimes you need to write it…
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False Ecumensim
I do not have an “official” definition of “The Culture War”. I know it when I see it. It’s all utter bullpucky of course. Christians have no purpose or point in any so-called “Cultural War”. We are a minority. Our Culture is the Kingdom of God. We save babies and widows, we feed the hungry…
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Biophilia and Lent
After applying the use of “necrophilia” to theologies (see my previous post), the Feminist writers of the last century co-opted the word “biophilia” from science and applied it, as well, to religion. A “Biophilic” spirituality (naturally, it would be “spiritual but not religious”) was one that was life affirming, not life denying, one that affirmed…
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Necrophilia and Lent
That ought to do wonders to my search results. The late Mary Daly’s Webster’s First Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language contained a number of interesting articles redefining words in common usage and inventing a few of her own. She was known for this since words with the definitions were all creations of the Patriarchy and…
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Civilization and its Discontents
Blaming the Victims Christians in ancient Rome went to their deaths to avoid burning a pinch of incense before a statue of Caesar or the other deities worshiped in the Roman State. A friend of mine, who is ordained in a “mainline” protestant body, said he didn’t think that would be an issue now: it’s…
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Epiphany Proclamation
Know, dearly beloved Brethren, that by the mercy of God, as we have been rejoicing in the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, so also do we announce unto you the joy of the Resurrection of the same our Saviour. Septuagesima Sunday will be on the 8th day of February. Ash Wednesday and the beginning…
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Tenth day of Christmas
Christmas The bells of waiting Advent ring,The Tortoise stove is lit againAnd lamp-oil light across the nightHas caught the streaks of winter rain.In many a stained-glass window sheenFrom Crimson Lake to Hooker’s Green. The holly in the windy hedgeAnd round the Manor House the yewWill soon be stripped to deck the ledge,The altar, font and…
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O Virgo – 8th Advent Meditation
O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud?Quia nec primam similem visa es nec habere sequentem.Filiae Ierusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis. O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be?For neither before was any like thee, nor shall there be after.Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That which ye behold is…
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O Emmanuel – the 7th Advent Meditation.
O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster. O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the one awaited by the gentiles, and their Saviour: come to save us, Lord our God. A reading from the works of St Cyril of Alexandria In earlier days a life…
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O Rex – the 6th Advent Meditation
O Rex Gentium,et desideratus earum,lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti. O King of the Nations, and the one they desired, keystone, who makes both peoples one, come and save mankind, whom you shaped from the mud. For our verse today, I want to reach back in to…
Orthoparadoxy 